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Monday, April 9, 2012

In honor of Titanic's recent re-release, we thought we'd give you a roundup of our top 10 favorite facts regarding the humongous movie event. Here's the list:

1. In order to break the ice with Leo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet flashed him once she found out she was going to be naked for the scene when he's drawing a picture of her.

2. James Cameron recently went down to Challenger Deep with his own submarine. He's been doing that kind of stuff for years now. To film the Titanic wreck from outside of the sub, he helped develop a new camera that would withstand the water pressure at that depth.

3. Despite Rose being the one saved by the wood piece at the end of the movie, Kate Winslet got pneumonia from that scene. That's because she was one of the only few people that didn't wear a wet suit when they filmed the scenes. The water was cold enough to get her sick.
4. James Cameron convinced Fox to finance the film by telling them that the publicity of having a real life dive to the wreckage would be beneficial for the movie.

5. It won 11 Oscars, which was unprecedented at the time. It also has a unique honor, in that it's one of two films in which two actresses were nominated for playing the same character in the same film. She and Gloria Stuart were both nominated for playing Rose.

6. The scene when the grand staircase gets flooded was the one and only shot. The set was destroyed in the process and there was no way they could've filmed it another time. The filming used 90,000 gallons of water. The staircase was ripped from its foundations thanks to the amount of water.

7. In order to make the steam room machines look bigger than they were, all the actors playing the operators were only about 5 feet tall.

8. There was a real J. Dawson that died aboard the Titanic.

9. The film's success at the Box Office was extremely rare. December had never been considered a lucrative time for movies. The movie's box office receipts were stable, instead of declining week over week. In fact, its highest weekend gross happened almost a month after the movie was released.

10. It was the first movie to win a Best Picture Oscar that was produced, directed, written and edited by the same person. Way to go, James Cameron.

Bonus: This one's pretty common, but still remarkable. Even if you adjust it for inflation, it cost MORE money to make a movie about the Titanic than it was to build the actual ship. Given that the movie has been such a success, I'd say the cost is pretty well justified, don't you think?